Gluten Free Wedding Cake

John y yo in Argentina!

I love cake but unfortunately more often than not cake does not like me. My fiance (I like the sound of that) and I have decided to search for one big gluten free cake for our wedding but with little more than a month until our big day this may be a challenge. I’m so excited! The search is on…

We have chosen to get hitched in Iowa, in John’s parents’ yard. The wedding is in July so hopefully it will be nice and warm and we think their lovely spacious, green yard will be such as pretty place to say our ‘I do’s’. Having chosen Iowa as our location, that means I’m going to have to find someone in Iowa who can bake me a wedding cake..either that or someone who can deliver it to me without too much trouble and cost.

…Much to my surprise I have discovered three different places in Iowa City that can make me a gluten free cake!

Teddy Bear Bakery, is the bakery business of a lovely woman named Greta which she runs from her home in Iowa City. Whilst she bakes both glutenous and gluten free cakes from her own kitchen, she is aware of cross contamination issues and takes precautions in order to limit the risks. When I asked her about how she keeps her gluten free baking, gluten free, this is what she told me.. All of her gluten free products are kept in a separate sealed plastic bin, including a sifter just for gluten free baking, which never touches anything but the flours for gluten free baking. She uses a sanitizing dishwasher, so that all utensils are machine washed and sanitized, counter tops are sprayed with sanitizing spray and aluminum baking pans are dipped in sanitizing solution for 30 seconds and air dried between uses of any kind. I was planning to get my cake from Greta until I discovered I could get gluten free cake from the same place that is catering our gluten free buffet. In my mind if a kitchen is being de- glutenated for the purposes of preparing my gluten free lasagna then why not have them make my gluten free wedding cake too!

John’s Grocery in Iowa City is where I’ve decided to get my gluten free wedding cake from. I heard that they did gluten free catering from a fellow gluten free bride (thank you Beth!) and when I contacted and spoke with Dee Jurgens, their deli-catering-bakery manager, I was convinced that they were a good choice.

John’s also sound like they have good measures in place to avoid contaminating customers…when they have  gluten free order, the whole kitchen is santitised the night before and then again the following morning before cooking begins. Gluten free products are kept in sealed bags away from their glutenous cousins.

John’s are making me a gluten free wedding cake, large enough to feed all of our guests. It’s going to be vanilla, tie-dye cake with chocolate frosting. I can’t wait for John to stuff a huge piece into my mouth and hopefully once all the guests are gone there will be a few sneaky slices left for us to polish off!

The third place I found that does gluten free cake is Fairgrounds Coffee House. They are a 100% vegan bakery in Iowa City and luckily for the gluten free of us, they have a gluten free bakery menu with lots of amazing sounding gluten free cake, cookie, muffin and scone options!

Their gluten free menu clearly states at the top ‘Celiacs please note: This is not a wheat-free facility.  All gluten-free baking is directly supervised by Christine Alexander, owner of Fair Grounds Coffeehouse and Bakery to ensure quality and crosscontamination control of ingredients.’   This sounds to me like the bakery are aware of how important cross contamination control is for celiacs and are doing their best to prevent this. In non 100% gluten free facilities we can never be 100% sure that no contamination will occur but I will usually go for it if I speak to whoever is making my food and I feel as though they are doing everything they can to prevent cross contamination.

Photos of our gluten free wedding cake and an update on how (hopefully) tasty it was to come soon…